west norwood cassette library – process part 269

I’ve downloaded a number of fine mixtapes from the Modyfier site over the years but when Rayna invited me to contribute to the series, I wanted to avoid turning in just another WNCL podcast and, instead, expand on a project of skits I was in the process of working on.

I had already randomly selected a dozen or so albums that I had compressed into blips of sound, sent them to my friend Nick Edwards (aka Ekoplekz) for a preliminary review and received the essential feedback that I didn’t want to hear but knew to be true – the project needed some structure!

The mechanics of the process were simple enough. Select an album from every year, sample the whole thing, splice out the phrases, hits, pops and squeaks of interest and meticulously re-structure them in the running order of the album.

Over the course of the next 2 years, I moved flat, had endless nightmares with builders and started a record label. Between times, I spent long nights listening to endless micro-samples until I had covered 5 decades of popular music.

Endorsements

“…sort of Plunderphonic but with John Oswald’s sneer replaced by affection and amusement/amazement.”Simon Reynolds, Blissblog

‘Bob Bhamra’s plunderphonic masterpiece joyfully collapses 5 decades of sonic culture into 25 minutes of abstract bliss. And vitally, the brilliance of the concept is never allowed to dominate the joy of the sound- this is a hyper-fragmented, gorgeously warped love letter to pop music.’Jonny Mugwump, Exotic Pylon,Resonance FM

“In this age of the super information highway, the problem is no longer how to access information, it is how to absorb it. The Instant Digest offers the perfect solution: sonic information compressed into short, sharp efficient byte-size chunks. After all, download culture has already removed 75% of extraneous audio information from our musical experience, so why not go the whole hog and reduce the actual duration too? Cut out all the boring bits, just give us the salient points, please. Instant Digest reduces the musical experience to the condition of Blipvert: just be careful it doesn’t make your head explode…”Nick Edwards (aka Ekoplekz akaGutterbreakz)

[…] springing up all over the place, including a recent interview in Dummy Mag and a visionary mix for Modifier. A remarkably gifted DJ/producer, as well as the founder of WNCL Recordings, WNCL (born Bob Bhamra) […]